Evaluating the Relationship between Sleep Disturbances and Sexual Quality of Life among Female Shift Working Nurses

Nurses with night shift work have sleep problems. Sexual quality of life can be a sing of health status and general quality of life. Aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between sleep disturbances and sexual quality of life among female shift working nurses.
In this cross-sectional study, the studied population was female nurses working in hospitals affiliated to Shahroud University of Medical Sciences (Imam Hossein and Bahar). Sampling was carried out using convenience sampling. The inclusion criteria were history of shift working in hospital more than one year, having at least two night shifts in a week, married and living with a spouse, and willingness to participate in the study. All participants completed the informed consent form before entering to the study. The data collection tools were a demographic and medical history form, women's sexual quality of life questionnaire and Pittsburgh Sleep Inventory and Sexual Self-Efficacy Questionnaire. To examine the relationship between demographic factors, medical history and sexual self-efficacy with sexual quality of life, ANOVA and independent t-test were used. Logistic regression analyzes were used to determine the predictors of the sexual quality of life status.
A total of 260 questionnaires from 285 eligible samples were evaluated for the final analysis. The results of this study showed that 65.4% of participants had poor sleep quality. The mean of sexual quality of life score was 67.67 ± 8.71. Age, age of the spouse, duration of marriage, work experience in years, the score of sexual self-efficacy and sleep quality obtained by the Pittsburgh sleep quality are factors associated with sexual quality of life among married shift working nurses.
Overall, the variables explained 44% of changes in sexual quality of life. The most important predictor was the quality of sleep among the studied variables. According to these results, it is possible to improve the sexual quality life by controlling some variables.